Tarot Thought Experiments: Can you trust your intuition?

As a tarot reader who has been obsessed with divination and the occult since I was old enough to rent The Craft from Blockbuster, people often ask me to what extent I make decisions based on my intuition. And my oh my, what a loaded topic…

This question is so multifaceted that I could probably write an entire book on the subject (shoot me an email if you’d be interested in reading that), but I think it boils down to this: there is no straightforward answer. Yet we all want to know whether we can trust our intuition when making big decisions.

I was thinking about this recently when I heard my dad teaching my nine-year-old nephew about a famous logic puzzle known as the Monty Hall problem. Growing up, my dad loved to recite this brain teaser rather theatrically to me and my brothers, and it went a little something like this:

You’re on a game show where you have to choose between three different doors in order to win a prize. You can’t see what’s behind each door, but one of them has the grand prize.

You’ve made your final selection when the host asks: “Do you want to stay with the door you’ve selected? Or do you want to switch?”

The answer, my dad would explain, is that you should always switch. 

Whereas most people assume that switching to one of the other two doors has a 50/50 chance of containing the grand prize, in reality, the probability of winning by the switching strategy is ⅔, whereas staying with your initial choice has only a ⅓ probability of winning.

I take issue with this as a barometer for making successful choices in life.

Now, before you close this tab, please do not misunderstand me—I’m not suggesting that we throw all logic and rationality out the window. I acknowledge the laws of mathematical probability, and if you want to win the grand prize in this scenario, then your best bet is definitely to switch doors. 

But because this is a tarot blog, and because we’re doing a spiritual thought experiment, I’d like to take this door metaphor and see if we can’t challenge our rational minds a bit.

To do that, let’s have a look at three imaginary scenarios. Three “doors,” so to speak.

Reason versus intuition when making life choices

In the first scenario, a client named Prudence comes for a tarot reading because she’s trying to decide whether she wants to take a job offer. She’s wondering what it will be like to work at this new place and whether it will be worth all the big changes she’ll need to make. The position is more senior and pays far above her current pay grade, but it means leaving behind beloved colleagues who are more like friends than co-workers. Prudence also mentions that, while she loves the work environment and her colleagues, the company has been suffering financially. She’s heard rumors of impending layoffs and she’s worried because her role would likely be part of the first cut.

We shuffle the cards and pull: Three of Swords, The Devil, Ten of Swords.

We proceed to discuss what challenges and risks she is willing to face to enjoy the benefits of this new position. Prudence thinks out loud about what it might feel like if she trades in her close-knit team for the gravy train, and she thinks about a few other external factors informing her decision: some personal debt and medical bills that she needs to pay off.

Prudence decides that, despite the known risks and challenges she’ll be taking on, the financial benefits and opportunities for future career growth are hard to turn down. She decides she’s going to take the offer. 

Now, Prudence’s case is a pretty clear example of how logic and common sense (e.g. considerations such as debt repayment and financial necessity) can be the driving factors behind a decision. But what about when the pull isn’t logical? 

Let’s take a look at a second, different scenario.

A young client named Jason has been dreaming for years about devoting himself to his fiction writing. He’s currently working full time for the marketing team at a small publishing house, where he is underpaid and undervalued. Jason comes in for a tarot reading, grappling with competing priorities and wondering how much more of this job he can take. Luckily for him, he’s got enough savings to carry him through the next half a year should he decide to quit, and he’s been toying with the idea of leaving his job in order to focus on his writing while he looks for a new position. Plus, if it doesn’t work out, he can always work part-time at his uncle’s bookstore until he gets back on his feet.

We shuffle and pull: Ace of Pentacles, The Empress, Knight of Wands.

Jason is thrilled. Not only does he realize that he’s excited by the prospect of networking and looking for more creative opportunities, but he is actually in the perfect position to branch out and try something new. Maybe something a little different than what he’s been doing up until now that offers more freedom and space to explore his artistic side. He knows he’ll have to proactively pursue his goals, but he feels confident that he can make this change.

Still, Jason hesitates. Something just doesn’t feel right. Even though all signs point to “Yes,” he can’t shake the feeling that he shouldn’t leave his job just yet, even though he can’t explain why. So he decides to stay at his company a while longer.

Finally, a third client named Everly comes in for a reading. Everly works full time as a barista and devotes herself to painting in her spare time. Everly has been wondering whether she should go back to school and whether it will be a good investment. She’s hopeful it will help her sell more paintings, and in general, she is excited by the idea.

We shuffle: Six of Cups, Six of Pentacles, Ace of Cups.

We talk about the fact that going to art school was Everly’s childhood dream. She says she always wanted to make more time for her creativity, and painting after work every day is what lights up her inner child. She knows she will have to work part-time in order to attend classes, so this means she’ll make half the money she’s making now, and she’ll probably need to take out a loan as well. She also knows there is no promise of a financial reward. Even so, as the conversation progresses, the feeling of excitement that she experiences as she imagines this new trajectory fills her with hope. In the end, Everly decides to go for it.

…With me so far? 

the unpredictability factor

Okay. Now let’s imagine that it’s one year later and Prudence sends an email to share an update. 

The new job was no joke. At first, she regretted her decision and mourned the loss of her cozy, close-knit group of colleagues, and woke up everyday wondering whether she had sold her soul. But she needed the money, so she put her head down and kept at it.

To her great surprise, Prudence discovered that her newfound responsibilities and discipline led to a breakthrough in her career. She came to realize that she had been underutilizing certain skills in her old position, and being challenged to put them to the test earned her a great deal of respect—both from herself and from upper management. Moreover, her old company went under, so she would definitely have been out of a job. And guess what? She was just promoted and will be starting a new position next week!

A few minutes later, an email from Jason pops up in our inbox. Jason shares that he stayed on for a while in his old job, where he was part of the promotional efforts for a book written by a local author he admires. He still faced the same frustrations with his manager, but something incredible happened.

Jason had the chance to meet the author in person, who told him about a summer writer’s retreat he was running for young authors. They got to talking about Jason’s love of fiction writing and the author encouraged him to join. Jason went to the retreat and the workshops helped him shape his rough drafts into a polished new novel. Working on the promotional efforts for the author’s book also gave him invaluable insights into how to market his own novel, which is currently under revision at another small publishing house. He finally understands that weird feeling in his chest telling him that he should stick it out at his old job a while longer.

……

…..

….

…It’s four years later, when we hear another ping at our inbox—it’s an email from Everly! She tells us she pursued her childhood dreams of going to art school.

Even though it was very hard work and hasn’t yet had the financial payoff she hoped it might, her art program led to new connections and friendships that continue to inspire her. She now shares a studio space with friends she met through school, and she even curates exhibitions for local artists at the coffee shop where she works, which has led to further collaborations and opportunities.

In the end, their situations all played out differently, but what all three clients have in common is that they all experienced unpredictable outcomes.

Still with me?

the invisibility factor: the importance of feeling

Now, at any point, Prudence, Jason or Everly could have made a different choice. Prudence could have stayed at her failing but friendly company, Jason could have left his unsatisfying job in pursuit of a new thrill, and Everly could have pursued a more financially stable path. Of course, there were external factors that informed each of their decisions in different ways, but all of them had to make a choice—with no way of knowing where their choice would lead. 

Sometimes, our choices will be informed primarily by reason and external circumstances, as with Prudence’s case. Other times, it might be a nagging sensation that something isn’t quite right, as in Jason’s scenario. Maybe, at times, your inner knowing is a powerful undercurrent that defies all logic, like with Everly.

So how can you trust your intuition when it doesn’t make logical sense? Is a gut feeling enough to ignore the probability-based calculations we saw in the Monty Hall problem?

The thing about intuition is that it works in mysterious ways that don’t always make sense at the time. Prudence could feel it was time to step up to the plate, even though her door seemed to lead to Hell. Jason could feel it was time to stick with his door a while, even though he saw the opportunity for more instant gratification. Everly could feel it was time to step through her chosen door, knowing very well it may have nothing behind it.

Each one of them had to make a decision based on practical information and common sense, but also on what they could feel was right for them at the time. And in each scenario, things worked out—for various reasons and on their own timeline.

Maybe picking the unlikely door works out for reasons you can’t predict at the moment of making a decision.

Or maybe choosing the empty door has something more personally and spiritually valuable to offer you than the immediate reward of some grand prize.

Or maybe the grand prize was a cash prize, and you were a gambling addict, so winning would have spiraled you even further into bad habits and debt, whereas picking the empty door forced you to get your life together.

Our instincts have strange ways of speaking to us, but it’s hard to follow our intuition when there is so much pressure to make the optimal, “logical” choice. Society wants us to make choices based on what we can see, know and measure because, to some degree, this is what keeps things running smoothly and efficiently. This is how capitalism ensures that corporations retain personnel, fulfill the orders in our supply chains and maintain the balance of power so it can continue to exploit. Imagine if all maritime workers unions around the globe suddenly went on an indefinite strike. We’d be totally f*@#ed! We need supply and demand, no questions asked, because this is what we know. Doing otherwise upsets the established order of things.

It also upsets us because this is what we are taught to accept: be efficient, optimize, and don’t deviate from a winning formula.

Philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek famously wrote that “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” — words that Mark Fisher expanded on to come up with his concept “capitalist realism,” or the attitude that there is no other feasible alternative to capitalism because anything else is a threat to the system we know. In a way, the three-door problem is the realism trap too many of us fall into when faced with choices in life: we cannot imagine that the door with a ⅓ probability of winning is a viable, valuable path, so we pick the other door—even when our intuition tells us to go with our gut and bet on ourselves.

imagination as survival

As much as our survival as humans depends on reason, it can just as easily become the extinction of all culture and everything that helps us find reasons to stay alive. Imagine a world in which there were no artists, no poets, no startups, no inventors, no one willing to go against the grain of what is already known. Imagine a world entirely dependent on the logic of winning, and void of beauty for beauty’s sake.

Now, I adore my dad—a brilliant, genius, rational thinker who can crack any logic problem and who taught me to think critically—but I practically leapt out of my skin when I heard him retelling the Monty Hall problem to my sweet, impressionable little nephew. Not because I don’t believe in logic, but because I question whether it is a good model for decision-making in life.

I’m not saying to ignore it, either; rather, that choosing the right door is a Jungian matter of “holding the tension between opposites.” Of acknowledging that our survival depends as much on the unknown as it does the knowable. 

This is precisely why tarot is so powerful: It does not force a false binary between reason and feeling, but propels us out of our complacency by bringing our values into conscious awareness. Tarot reminds us that it is never a mistake to pursue that which is meaningful to us, for whatever reason, because this is how we feed our soul. Otherwise, we are left to the wolves of fear. Otherwise, we stay trapped in our passiveness, and this will ultimately kill us anyway.

So go ahead: Switch doors when you are faced with situations in life that require you to act as such. 

But maybe stick with your door from time to time if that’s what your intuition is urging you to do. You never know what you might find behind it—or why that discovery is important for you as you progress along your unique path.